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} }) </script> </div> </form> </fieldset> <article class="entryArticle content STeditorial"> <header class="entryHeader icon-theme"> <h1 class="entryTitle">Power Sources </h1> </header><p class='tagLine'>Entry updated 20 November 2023. Tagged: Theme.</p><div class="browsingBtns"> <span> <input class="button PNI previous" type="button" onclick="window.location.href='/next.php?id=p&entry=power_sources'" value="Prev" /> </span> <span> <input class="button PNI next" type="button" onclick="window.location.href='/next.php?&entry=power_sources'" value="Next" /> </span> <span> <input class="button PNI incoming" type="button" onclick="window.location.href='/incoming.php?entry=power_sources'" value="About This Entry" title="What links to the entry; contributor initials explained; how to cite; other information" /> </span> <span style="cursor: pointer;" onclick="window.open('/gallery.php?link=power_sources');"> <img alt="Icon made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com" style="margin: 0; position: relative; top:-2px;" src="/images/icon-gal.gif"></img></span> </div><p style='float:right; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:10px; position: relative; top: 3px;'> <a href='/gallery.php?id=Chrulew-PhaseChange.jpg' target='_blank'> <img src='https://x.sf-encyclopedia.com/gal/thumbs/Chrulew-PhaseChange.jpg' alt='pic'></a></p> <p>We live in an age of imminent resources crisis, anxiously anticipating the depletion of fossil-fuel reserves even while we become reluctant to rely on <a href="/entry/nuclear_energy">Nuclear Energy</a> because of the <a href="/entry/pollution">Pollution</a> problems caused by radioactive wastes and the necessary expense of decommissioning obsolete, contaminated installations. New options rely either on discoveries not yet made – the development of nuclear-fusion reactors, or of more efficient ways to convert solar energy into electricity – or on a political will which governments of all persuasions seem too short-sighted to exercise, as with tidal and wind power. There was, however, little trace of such anxieties in sf published before public concern began to grow; the future scenarios envisaged by early sf writers frequently assumed our energy resources to be potentially infinite.</p> <p>For most of human history, <a href="/entry/machines">Machines</a> were worked by three basic power sources: wind, water and muscle. For millennia people used fire as a source of heat and an agent of physical and chemical change without learning how to harness it as an energy source in mechanical work; then the invention of the steam engine precipitated the Industrial Revolution. Sf writers, following in the tracks of countless optimists who had tried to sidestep the problem by inventing "perpetual-motion machines", were only too ready to imagine future revolutions of similarly awesome scope. Electricity was often viewed as a quasimagical animating force, as in Mary <a href="/entry/shelley_mary_wollstonecraft">Shelley</a>'s <i>Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus</i> (<b>1818</b>; rev <b>1831</b>) and Arthur Conan <a href="/entry/doyle_arthur_conan">Doyle</a>'s "The Los Amigos Fiasco" (December 1892 <a href="/entry/idler_the">Idler</a>). In Lord <a href="/entry/lytton_edward_bulwer">Lytton</a>'s <i>The Coming Race</i> (<b>1871</b>) the key to energy-prosperity is <i>vril</i>, a kind of "atmospheric magnetism" administered by a device bearing a suspicious resemblance to a magic wand (a wand waved to considerable effect in <i>The Vril Staff</i> [<b>1891</b>] by <a href="/entry/xyz">XYZ</a>) (see <a href="/entry/pseudoscience">Pseudoscience</a>). Percy <a href="/entry/greg_percy">Greg</a>'s <i>Across the Zodiac</i> (<b>1880</b>) employs the equally mysterious <a href="/entry/apergy">Apergy</a>, which seems to be <a href="/entry/antigravity">Antigravity</a> with a seasoning of electrical mysticism; like <i>vril</i>, apergy was borrowed by other writers, including John Jacob <a href="/entry/astor_john_jacob">Astor</a> in <i>A Journey in Other Worlds</i> (<b>1894</b>), and it is the obvious model for the antigravity devices used in Robert <a href="/entry/cromie_robert">Cromie</a>'s <i>A Plunge into Space</i> (<b>1890</b>) and H G <a href="/entry/wells_h_g">Wells</a>'s <i>The First Men in the Moon</i> (<b>1901</b>). In <i>Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea</i> (<b>1870</b>; trans <b>1873</b>) Jules <a href="/entry/verne_jules">Verne</a> was ready to assume that electrical energy could be drawn from sea water by quasimagical means. This optimistic outlook was boosted by the discovery of X-rays in 1895; for many years thereafter unlimited power was casually generated in sf stories by the invocation of magical <a href="/entry/rays">Rays</a>. The discovery of radioactivity only a few years later provided yet another jargon: power derived from atomic breakdown, spontaneous or forced. This, of course, turned out to be a real possibility, but its prominence in early sf owes more to convenience than to an assessment of its true potential. <a href="/entry/genre_sf">Genre SF</a> inherited this considerable jargon and understandably made the most of it. E E "Doc" <a href="/entry/smith_e_e">Smith</a>'s <i>The Skylark of Space</i> (August-October 1928 <a href="/entry/amazing">Amazing</a>; <b>1946</b>) begins when a bathtub coated with "X, the unknown metal" reacts to the appropriate Open Sesame by releasing limitless quantities of "infra-atomic energy" – a moment cruelly parodied by the discovery of the cheese-based "Cheddite" in Harry <a href="/entry/harrison_harry">Harrison</a>'s <i>Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers</i> (<b>1973</b>).</p> <p>Given this confidence in the imminent availability of unlimited power, it is not surprising that the most thoughtful work of speculative writers in the early twentieth century deals with the question of the social responsibility of <a href="/entry/scientists">Scientists</a> making such discoveries. An early <a href="/entry/cinema">Cinema</a> example featuring a monopoly on the world's power supply is the German <a href="/entry/algol_tragedy_of_power">Algol – Tragedy of Power</a> (<i>1920</i>). Stories of wise men blackmailing the world into peace and social justice for all are common, but much more delicate exercises include Karel <a href="/entry/capek_karel">Čapek</a>'s satire <i>The Absolute at Large</i> (<b>1922</b>; trans <b>1927</b>) and his surreal "atomic phantasy" <i>Krakatit</i> (<b>1924</b>; trans <b>1925</b>). The former concerns the "Karburator", which not only releases the energy bound in matter but also the spiritual "power" which went into its creation, generating worldwide <a href="/entry/religion">Religious</a> fanaticism; a later <a href="/entry/satire">Satire</a> with a related theme is Romain <a href="/entry/gary_romain">Gary</a>'s <i>The Gasp</i> (<b>1973</b>), in which the energy of immortal souls is harnessed as an industrial power source. Pulp sf celebrated the imminence of what Hugo <a href="/entry/gernsback_hugo">Gernsback</a> sometimes called the "Age of Power Freedom". Antigravity and wonderful <a href="/entry/rays">Rays</a> were given <i>carte blanche</i> to defy the conservation laws – a situation encouraged rather than inhibited by the real-life discovery of atomic power, which was for a brief period taken as "proof" that limitless energy was actually available. Jack <a href="/entry/williamson_jack">Williamson</a>'s "The Equalizer" (March 1947 <a href="/entry/asf">Astounding</a>) is a thoughtful attempt to analyse the social consequences of free power for all, resurrecting the <i>vril</i> staff as a literary device. Raymond F <a href="/entry/jones_raymond_f">Jones</a>'s "Noise Level" (December 1952 <a href="/entry/asf">Astounding</a>) supposes that the only thing standing between science and the discovery of limitless power is the belief of scientists in its impossibility. So convincing was this line of argument to readers of <a href="/entry/asf">Astounding Science-Fiction</a> that the story gave rise to several sequels, letters and articles criticizing contemporary patent law for its unfair treatment of perpetual motion and its blatant discrimination against discoveries of new fundamental principles in science. This optimism waned rapidly during the 1960s, although Theodore <a href="/entry/sturgeon_theodore">Sturgeon</a>'s "Brownshoes" (May 1969 <i>Adam</i>; vt "The Man Who Learned Loving" October 1969 <a href="/entry/fsf">F&SF</a>) is a heartfelt parable about the difficulty of making a gift of perpetual motion to mankind in a world where so many vested interests (e.g., oil companies) would do their utmost to suppress it.</p> <p>Frank <a href="/entry/herbert_frank">Herbert</a>'s <i>The Dragon in the Sea</i> (November 1955-January 1956 <a href="/entry/asf">Astounding</a> as "Under Pressure"; <b>1956</b>; vt <i>21st Century Sub</i> <b>1956</b>; vt <i>Under Pressure</i> <b>1974</b>) posited a fuel shortage in future America, alleviated by dangerous submarine missions to pirate Soviet oil reserves from a well <a href="/entry/under_the_sea">Under the Sea</a> that is unknown to the USSR. The dependence of the developed countries on shrinking coal and oil reserves was brought home dramatically from 1973 on by the emergence of OPEC as a political force capable of dictating energy policy to the West. The <a href="/entry/politics">Politics</a> of energy came to play a major part in many near-future novels, including Frederik <a href="/entry/pohl_frederik">Pohl</a>'s <i>JEM: The Making of a Utopia</i> (<b>1979</b>) and <i>The Cool War</i> (<b>1981</b>), the latter also being one of several stories to explore the idea of transmitting power in the form of microwaves down to Earth from solar cells mounted on satellites. Far-out variations of solar power include a <a href="/entry/time_travel">Time Travel</a> link to tap the energy of the nova which our <a href="/entry/sun">Sun</a> has become in the <a href="/entry/far_future">Far Future</a> of Isaac <a href="/entry/asimov_isaac">Asimov</a>'s <i>The End of Eternity</i> (<b>1955</b>), and direct extraction of power from the present-day sun via a <a href="/entry/time_viewer">Time Viewer</a> tuned to its location.</p> <p>The OPEC-precipitated oil crisis of the 1970s inspired such unlikely projects as the attempt to hijack the Middle-Eastern oilfields by <a href="/entry/time_travel">Time Travel</a> in Wolfgang <a href="/entry/jeschke_wolfgang">Jeschke</a>'s <i>The Last Day of Creation</i> (<b>1981</b>; trans <b>1982</b>) and the use of exotic living machinery to extract oil in Rory <a href="/entry/harper_rory">Harper</a>'s <a href="/entry/alternate_history">Alternate-History</a> story <i>Petrogypsies</i> (<b>1989</b>); many <a href="/entry/technothriller">Technothrillers</a> are concerned with power sources in one way or another, standard plots often centring either on squabblings between multinational power companies or on the discovery – usually merely as a <a href="/entry/mcguffin">McGuffin</a> – of new ways of producing energy. Fantasies in which energy sources appear by miraculous <i>fiat</i>, like D G <a href="/entry/compton_d_g">Compton</a>'s <i>Ascendancies</i> (<b>1980</b>), acquired a sharp cautionary note.</p> <p>The dream of attaining atomic power without its attendant inconveniences has led to the sf assumption that cheap power may be extracted from <a href="/entry/antimatter">Antimatter</a> (which see) or a variety of imagined ideal fuel metals: Illyrion in Samuel R <a href="/entry/delany_samuel_r">Delany</a>'s <i>Nova</i> (<b>1968</b>; text corrected 1969), "safe uranium" in Walter <a href="/entry/tevis_walter">Tevis</a>'s <i>The Steps of the Sun</i> (<b>1983</b>) or "Protonite" in Piers <a href="/entry/anthony_piers">Anthony</a>'s <b>Apprentice Adept</b> sf/fantasy crossover series (see <a href="/entry/science_and_sorcery">Science and Sorcery</a>). Power is derived from <a href="/entry/parallel_worlds">Parallel Worlds</a> or universes by a semi-mystical route in Robert <a href="/entry/heinlein_robert_a">Heinlein</a>'s "Waldo" (August 1942 <a href="/entry/asf">Astounding</a>) as by Anson MacDonald, from similar sources via "electron pump" in Isaac Asimov's <i>The Gods Themselves</i> (March/April-May-June 1972 <a href="/entry/galaxy">Galaxy</a>; <b>1972</b>) and from <a href="/entry/hyperspace">Hyperspace</a> in Iain M <a href="/entry/banks_iain_m">Banks</a>'s <b>Culture</b> sequence.</p> <p>The broadcast-power concept originally imagined by Nikola <a href="/entry/tesla_nikola">Tesla</a> is driven by <a href="/entry/antimatter">Antimatter</a> in Jack <a href="/entry/williamson_jack">Williamson</a>'s <i>Seetee Shock</i> (February-April 1949 <a href="/entry/asf">Astounding</a>; <b>1950</b>) as by Will Stewart, which builds towards the <a href="/entry/utopias">Utopian</a> "Fifth Freedom" of free broadcast power throughout the solar system. An ancient Martian broadcast-power transceiver is studied in George O <a href="/entry/smith_george_o">Smith</a>'s <b>Venus Equilateral</b> story "Lost Art" (December 1943 <a href="/entry/asf">Astounding</a>), and adapted to draw power directly from the <a href="/entry/sun">Sun</a> in the sequel "The Long Way" (April 1944 <a href="/entry/asf">Astounding</a>). Power transmissions appear in many other sf scenarios, for example sustaining the <a href="/entry/robots">Robot</a> <a href="/entry/aliens">Aliens</a> of Eric Frank <a href="/entry/russell_eric_frank">Russell</a>'s "Mechanistria" (January 1942 <a href="/entry/asf">Astounding</a>). Robert A <a href="/entry/heinlein_robert_a">Heinlein</a> adds a note of perhaps prophetic concern about such widespread broadcasts' effect on the human nervous system in "Waldo" (August 1942 <a href="/entry/asf">Astounding</a>) as by Anson MacDonald.</p> <p>Safe and efficient nuclear fusion power is very frequently assumed in optimistic sf scenarios. Fusion of light elements to generate heavier ones plus excess energy is routinely achieved in the high temperature of the <a href="/entry/sun">Sun</a> and other <a href="/entry/stars">Stars</a>: the difficulty for earthbound reactors is not so much attaining the necessary temperature – regularly done on a small-scale experimental basis – as containing the superhot plasma and extracting sufficient energy yield to make the reaction self-sustaining. A barely fictionalized account of 1970s fusion expectations, with magnetically contained deuterium plasma superheated to fusion point in a toroidal containment device, appears in Milton A <a href="/entry/rothman_milton_a">Rothman</a>'s "Fusion" (in <i>Stellar 1</i>, anth <b>1974</b>, ed Judy-Lynn <a href="/entry/del_rey_judy-lynn">del Rey</a>). Meanwhile <a href="/entry/urban_legends">Urban Legends</a> "explain" that clean and cheap or free energy sources are already available but have been suppressed by big business.</p> <p>A real measure of imaginative fervour with respect to marvellous power sources survives in the matter of <a href="/entry/spaceships">Spaceship</a> propulsion, ranging from the solar yachts of Arthur C <a href="/entry/clarke_arthur_c">Clarke</a>'s "Sunjammer" (March 1964 <a href="/entry/boys_life">Boys' Life</a>; vt "The Wind from the Sun" in <i>The Wind from the Sun</i>, coll <b>1972</b>), which use the <a href="/entry/solar_wind">Solar Wind</a>, to the <a href="/entry/black_holes">Black-Hole</a> propulsion system for interplanetary vessels in the same author's <i>Imperial Earth</i> (<b>1975</b>) and the "quantum ramdrive" which taps "Planck fluctuations" in space – essentially a free and unlimited energy source – in his <i>The Songs of Distant Earth</i> (June 1958 <a href="/entry/if">If</a>; much exp <b>1986</b>). Particularly grandiose is the "cosmogonic engine" of Ken <a href="/entry/macleod_ken">MacLeod</a>'s <i>Learning the World</i> (<b>2005</b>), whose every pulse creates and extracts power from a new universe, a tiny Big Bang. [BS/DRL]</p> <p><b>see also:</b> <a href="/entry/ecology">Ecology</a>; <a href="/entry/technology">Technology</a>; <a href="/entry/under_the_sea">Under the Sea</a>; <a href="/entry/weapons">Weapons</a>.</p> <p><b>further reading</b></p> <ul class="x"> <li>Matthew Chrulew, editor. <em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Phase+Change+Imagining+Energy+Futures&field-author=Matthew+Chrulew" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Phase Change: Imagining Energy Futures</a></em> (Yokine, Western Australia: Twelfth Planet Press, <b>2022</b>) [anth: pb/Perdita Phillips]</li> </ul> <p><b>links</b></p> <ul class="x"> <li><a target="_blank" href="https://sf-encyclopedia.com/gallery.php?link=power_sources">Picture Gallery</a></li> </ul> <p><b>previous versions of this entry</b></p> <ul><li><a href='https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/power_sources' target='_blank'>Internet Archive</a></li></ul><br /><br /></article></div> <div class="sideBarsWrapper"> <div class="sideBarsColsWrapper clearfix"> <div class="column sideBar12 clearfix"> <div class="columnForm"><aside id="blogFeed" class="widget"> <div class="content STeditorial clearfix"> <h2>Recently visited entries<span style="background:url(/images/thingSFE2.png) !important"></span></h2><ul style='width: 50%; 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